By Bida Elly David
Some secondary school teachers have raised their concerns over the delayed invigilation incentives for the 2021-2022 Secondary Certificate of Education (SCE) and slammed the Ministry of General Education for being discriminative in following payment of markers before them.
These concerns were raised following the declaration of the Secondary Certificate of Education (SCE) results and payment of exams markers and the analysts leaving the cumulative number of invigilators who sacrificially participated in organizing various schools to ensure minimization of malpractices.
The senior four final exams was held in April but up to date, invigilators’ incentives remained withheld while markers and analysts walked away with smiles after receiving their incentives.
Over the past years, teachers have been raising concerns over continuous delays of their monthly arrears and other incentives.
The continuous delay of the incentives has triggered loss of hope and interest on service delivery leaving some teachers to resort into external businesses to earn a living.
Despite the increment of the teachers’ salaries by one hundred and forty percent (140%), there have been multiple issues that could not be addressed to expectation.
Speaking to No.1 Citizen Daily Newspaper yesterday, a group of teachers whose names remained withheld demonstrated their concerns against the act by the national ministry of education and criticized the act terming it to be a total underestimation of teachers beyond doubts.
They termed what the National Ministry of General Education and Instructions did as a total discrimination and underestimation of teachers beyond reasonable skepticism and urged them to clearly point out reasons for withholding this little incentive for long.
“We have even been pressed down with any little incentive we demand to put food on table for our kids. The little that we would have received from this invigilation would have helped to at least get sugar or greens for our young ones.”
“The examination was done in April and up to now we could not see our invigilation incentives rather the markers who started their work lately received their incentives months after the exams were done,” they said.
They further reiterated that the continuous delays of the invigilation incentives for many have remained passively transformable leaving some teachers to exit the tasks.
They urged the Ministry of General Education to speedily release the invigilation incentives to enable them cover up some of the gaps related to their demands and called them to top them up in the coming exams.
Meanwhile, when contacted for comment, the Undersecretary in the National Ministry of General Education and Instructions, Kuyok Abol Kuyok declined to speak on the matter when phoned by No.1 Citizen Daily Newspaper to react on the matter.
He said that he wasn’t ready to communicate without pointing out any reason.